Sunday, August 3, 2014

The British Invaders Blogathon: Went the Day Well? (1942)

This essay is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s contribution to
The
British Invaders Blogathon, currently underway from August 1-3 atA Shroud of Thoughtsand spotlighting
the best in classic films that originated on the other side of the pond.For a
list of participating blogs and the movies/topics discussed, click here.

There’s very little doubt as to the outcome of the events in Went the Day Well? (1942)—Charlie Sims
(Mervyn Johns), the verger at the local church, explains in the first three
minutes of the movie that the famed “Battle of Bramley End” came out all right
in the wash.We then flashback to a
Whitsun weekend in the sleepy little English hamlet—Whitsun being the English
designation for Pentecost—where there wasn’t much going on save for a platoon
of British soldiers who have arrived in Bramley under the supervision of Major
Hammond (Basil Sydney).Hammond makes
arrangements to billet his men, with the inhabitants are most welcoming of
their temporary guests.

Still...there’s something a bit unsettling about the presence of
Hammond and his men.Nora
Ashton (Valerie Taylor), the vicar’s daughter, finds it curious that when the
back of a telegram was used to mark down scores in a card game that took place among
several soldiers—the figures were jotted down in the “Continental” manner, with
elongated fives and strokes through the sevens.Nora’s suspicions are further aroused when young George Truscott (Harry
Fowler) finds a chocolate bar among Hammond’s personal effects.An Austrian
chocolate bar.

Nora takes her concerns to the village squire, Oliver
Wilsford (Leslie Banks)…but today is just not her lucky day.Wilsford is a fifth columnist, working with
Hammond—whose real identity is Kommandant Orlter, and who’s on hand as the
leader of a vanguard of an invasion of Britain.Oriter and his men quickly establish their authority in the blink of an
eye (by killing the Reverend Ashton, Nora’s father, when he attempts to signal
outside help by ringing the church bell) and inform the stunned populace that no one is leaving Bramley…and any
attempts to contact anyone outside the village will be dealt with most
severely.(Nazis.I hate
these guys.)

Went the Day Well? is a mixture of WW2 propaganda, comic nightmare and subversive surrealism that
was produced at the renowned Ealing Studios, a name we usually associate with
such classic comedies like Kind Hearts
and Coronets (1949) and The Lavender
Hill Mob (1951).The source for the
script (written by John Dighton, Angus MacPhail and Diana Morgan) was a short
story written by Graham (TheThird Man) Greene; in “The Lieutenant Died
Last,” published in the U.S. in 1940, a poacher single-handedly stymies a Nazi
attempt to invade a rural English village.Dighton, MacPhail and Morgan considerably expanded the scope of Graham’s
tale, though they did feature the poacher (played by Edward Rigby) as a minor
character.

Despite the spoiler warning at the beginning of the movie, Went the Day Well? is a model of
cinematic suspense; sure, we know the villagers eventually get the word out
concerning their plight, but director Alberto Cavalcanti makes us squirm in true
Hitchcockian fashion.(Cavalcanti would
later go on to helm the most famous segment of the 1945 British horror
anthology Dead of Night—the one with
Sir Michael Redgrave and that freaking ventriloquist dummy—and the underrated
1947 noir They Made Me aFugitive.)Two Land Army girls, Peggy Fry (Elizabeth
Allan) and Ivy Dawking (Thora Hird), manage to scrawl a message of help onto an
egg that is placed in a box with other hen fruit and handed off to a boy
delivering newspapers by bicycle.The
paperboy is sideswiped by a car on its way to Bramley, and the eggs wind up
smashed.This sets up the next attempt:
the driver of the car is a woman named Maud Chapman (Hilda Bayley), who’s there
to pay her dowager cousin Mrs. Fraser (Marie Lohr) a visit.Fraser manages to smuggle a note to her cuz
in the pocket of her jacket, but Maud uses the paper to steady a rattling
window on the passenger side of her automobile.(The paper later becomes dislodged and is devoured in the backseat by
Maud’s dog.)

The film often juxtaposes moments of black comedy and
jarring, disturbing violence—the most memorable sequence involves the town’s
postmistress (Muriel George), who also moonlights as Bramley’s phone
operator.Held hostage in her home by
one of the German soldiers, she springs into action by throwing pepper into the
Nazi’s eyes and dispatches him to the Great Beyond with the help of an
axe.She then tries to ring for help but
her call is ignored by a gossipy phone operator from a neighboring town…and by
the time chatty Gertrude returns to the desperate woman she’s met the business
end of a German bayonet.

Released in December of 1942, Went the Day Well? premiered a few months after the similar The Nextof Kin (also produced by Ealing, and featuring Well? players Johns, Sydney, Hird and Johnnie Scofield)—both movies
were made not necessarily to scare the British public, but to highlight the
possible dangers of a Nazi invasion.Most scholars are in agreement that by the time of the movie’s release,
that scenario was highly unlikely.Still, the movie continues to exert its influence; the 1971 feature film
version of the hit Britcom Dad’s Army (as well as a couple of
episodes of the series) covers similar ground as well as the 1972 novel The Eagle HasLanded, which was brought to the big screen in 1977.The mention of “the Home Guard” in the film
kind of made me smile because I couldn’t help but think of what Dad’s
Army fans call “The Magnificent Seven”…though I would be remiss in
pointing out that what happens to the Guard in Went the Day Well? is far more savage than any of the shenanigans
that befell Captain Mainwaring and Company.

Went the Day Well?
eventually reached U.S. shores in June of 1944, retitled 48 Hours…because most American audiences were not familiar with the
famous quotation by John Maxwell Edmonds that was borrowed for the title of the
movie.(“Went the day well?/We died and never knew/But, well or ill/Freedom, we
died for you”)It’s been off the
radar screens of most classic film buffs—but according to TCM oracle Robert
Osborne, it was one of the surprise hits of the TCM Film Festival in 2011…and
recently premiered on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ in April of
this year.Bobby Osbo and guest
programmer Glenn Taranto noted that with the exception of Leslie Banks
(subversively cast as the treacherous Wilsford in light of his heroics in
1935’s Sanders of the River) and
Mervyn Johns (Glynis’ pop; he’s also in Dead
of Night) most of the British thesps will be unfamiliar to us Yanks; but I
recognized Dame Thora, or course, as well as Patricia Hayes (as the
postmistress’ assistant) and David Farrar (Black
Narcissus).(James Donald and Dad’s
Army’s Private Godfrey, Arnold Ridley, also appear in bit parts.)

No, I first became acquainted with Went the Day Well? when I read about it as one of the entries in Halliwell’s Hundred; released to Region
2 DVD in November of 2006, I procured myself a copy (though the movie was
re-released in 2011 to take advantage of its 2010 restoration—this is the
version Tee Cee Em showed in April) and have been a champion of the movie ever
since.It’s unquestionably one of the
finest war films I’ve ever watched, a masterful blend of comedy and
suspense…and the next time it makes the rounds again on Turner Classic Movies,
I suggest you make an appointment to see it.

7 comments:

Very nice to read about "Went the Day Well". I only saw the film once, courtesy of TV Ontario (our province's public television). The next time I see it will feel like the first time, it was that long ago.

Thank you so much for writing about Went the Day Well?. I have read a good deal about the film, but I have never had the opportunity to see it. I will certainly have to make an effort to do so now! Anyway, thank you so much for participating in the blogathon!

This film just looks so 'British'! I've not seen many of Alberto Cavalcanti's films (I think he's very underrated) so I'll add this one to my watch list. Have you seen They Made Me A Fugitive? Reading your review, I think you might enjoy that.

I've heard of Went the Day Well? but never seen it. But such high praise means a lot coming from so knowledgeable a source as you, so this one's going to the top of my list.It does sound like a very unique kind of World War II movie. Very glad you were able to highlight it for the blogathon.